Let's call Oprah

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Maybe someone with the time and desire can try to convince Oprah's staff to do an expose on nurses and how we are treated? My opinon is she is a corporate suck-up and wont touch this.

has oprah ever done any thing like that for doctors?

let's be fair!

besides who will go forward?

u have to be willing to tell your story, for someone to tell it!

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has oprah ever done any thing like that for doctors?

let's be fair!

besides who will go forward?

u have to be willing to tell your story, for someone to tell it!

I hope I am not reading you say that no nurse will step forward and tell it like it is!

I know of several nurses that have not shied away from taking on the so called "big-guns". Nurses that testified at Congressional hearings, on radio, on TV, telling the story of bedside conditions and the choices healthcare corporations make that prevent us from delivering the quality care patients deserve.

Nurses that have gone against Tenet at CON (Certificate of Need) hearings and won.

Nurses that have spoken successfully at County hearings, warning against sale deals of community hospitals to large corporations.

I know that the members of the Nurse Alliance of SEIU are always willing to tell the story, both in person and in writing.

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Let's cut them some slack.

Originally Posted by sunnyjohn

Let's cut them some slack.

Oprah and shows like that get thousands of e-mails a week suggesting show topics. Quite frankly any such show that stays on the air long enough eventually does on about nurses. We've all seen the one-sided shoddy reporting.

The goal is to get on of these hosts to do the show from the nursing perspective. If the general public knew that the nurse was their biggest advocate when it came to heathcare issues, they would be more interested in what we had to say.

A FOCUSED write-in campaign designed to get a few of these shows (Dateline, Primetime, Oprah, 20/20, etc) to do a show on nurses at the same time would be best. Saturate the market, change the message and DOMINATE the dialogue through the media.

I have done some research on different email address's and websites. I have started emailing them.

ABC: for Good Morning America

www.abc.go.com

20/20 20/[email protected]

Today Show on NBC

[email protected]

CBS

60 minuites

[email protected]

48 Hours

[email protected]

I hope these will help. Does anyone else know some other emails of contacts.

Karenpj:balloons:

Thanks for the research and the information. Very helpful! I sent a letter to each of the contacts stating that our patients deserve a show that tells the story of the real nursing crisis and allows bedside nurses to fulfill our professional oath: to be a patient advocate.

Anyone else????

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I sent a letter to each of the contacts stating that our patients deserve a show that tells the story of the real nursing crisis and allows bedside nurses to fulfill our professional oath: to be a patient advocate.

This illustrates to me part of the problem with presenting professional nursing on a program such as Oprah Winfrey's.

No "professional oath" (the "Florence Nightingale Pledge"?) I'm aware of has any mention of patient advocacy.

What's more, while nurses some think "patient advocacy" is what nurses do, many don't.

We have trouble agreeing on what nurses do, and we're nurses.

If WE can't agree on what it is we do, how can we present a coherent message on a TV program?

Jim Huffman, RN

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The coherent message will be that current working conditions at the bedside prevent nurses from providing the quality care the patients deserve.

When we "triple" in ICU, the patients are at risk; when a med-surg nurse cares for 8 to 10 patients, the patients are at risk. Yet, when nurses excercise their professional judgement and challenge unsafe assignments, their professionalism is not taken into account and they are told to make do, if not something even more threatening.

That is where the patient advocacy comes into the picture.

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I have a problem just convincing my coworkers that they have to be proactive. All they do is moan and b*tch in the lounge about how badly they are treated. One of the nurses actually ordered me not to say anything "controversial" to the doctors.

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Unless we come up with some solutions or possible solutions no matter what televison program we would get on we would only sound like we were bi######. If we don't have the answers how do we expect the general public to have answers.

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this from an earlier post of mine:

"we trust nurses to recognize critical trends in their patient’s vital signs, but we deny their instincts with regard to their own basic needs and fitness for duty. this is disrespectful and, all too frequently, downright dangerous; nurses know when they need to eat, drink and rest. they also know when they should call in sick and not come in to work caring for vulnerable patients! however, if a mistake is caused by under-staffing, untrained assistive personnel or fatigue, will the hospital managers who created this appalling situation be held accountable? i doubt it."

we still pretend that we do not trust nurses to decide that they require additional staff to monitor critical patients or larger numbers of less critical patients. managers and hospital administrators know that their nurses are perfectly capable of determining when the current staffing level is leaving them dangerously overwhelmed. they use an insidious combination of guilt, insecurity and vanity to deliberately under-staff clinical areas.

1. guilt: how could you be so selfish as to abandon your patient?

2. insecurity: why are you so incapable of coping with a few extra patients?

3. vanity: a really professional nurse would just get on with the job no matter how swamped with patients the unit became.

don't buy into this c**p; it is all about the money - fewer staff: bigger profits.

if your gut tells you it is unsafe: go with your gut. so much paperwork is dumped on nurses to protect the hospital. it is time to start fighting back with their weapon: paperwork. start documenting under-staffing; document missed breaks; document mandated overtime: document everything just as a conscientious nurse should.

at my former hospital i suggested a minor protocol refinement that would require the circulating nurse to document on an incident report when a scrub nurse or tech. was left abandoned, scrubbed into surgery, for a period greater that 6-8hours. why? because of the inevitable loss of concentration and extreme fatigue after extended periods continuously scrubbed into surgery. forget the luxury of putting your feet up; there are basic necessities dictated by basic human rights and simple human dignity. most importantly: a member of the or team going without water; food; or a run to the bathroom for 8 - 10 or 12 hours presents a tangible danger to the patient unconscious on the or table. any potential "danger to the patient" should be documented in an incident report. does this mean that in an emergency we would be demanding breaks at the expense of patient priorities? no, it creates a paper trail and this documentation is vital.

this simple documentation requirement would identify a particularly abusive manager like the one who left me stranded in surgery for 8, 10 and on one occasion 12hours straight. it would also identify the stubborn and aloof professional practice model that considered other or staff incapable of coping during a short break in their specialty cases. it would identify chronic under-staffing and the dangerous lack of redundancy among unit personnel. most of all it would be on record; which is exactly what the cost-containment police do not want.

the or is a very restrictive place to work as i am sure you all know. during most surgery we do not sit down for the whole case and one gets use to not being ably to scratch an occasional itch. the vigilance necessary to protect the sterility of the field does not allow us to drop our guard and we are supposed to be anticipating the needs of the surgeon. “cruise control” is not an option during surgery! but if no one comes to relieve you then you are stuck there for the duration. try calling for backup on the phone you cannot even touch!

however, other critical care areas are being hung out to dry in the current ruthless, profit first, environment. lack of redundancy of personnel means no real break coverage and ultimately this is very dangerous. how do icu nurses cope when a fellow nurse asks to have her patients monitored while she leaves the unit briefly? with critical patients there are critical occurrences. so what if their nurse was in the bathroom when they coded? redundancy allows for these situations and is therefore essential to patient safety especially in critical areas.

so did that famous hospital where i spent five years in the or adopt my protocol refinement? not on your life. did the maryland board of nursing even bother to send me a polite form letter to say they might look into the possible need for tightening regulations? never; they were too busy protecting the best interests of their state icon. they were not about to concede that the person being unjustly demonized by that prestigious institution might actually have a valid point. as part of the “collateral damage” of deliberate under-staffing i am banished from my profession while “america’s best hospital” continues to win accolades and garner international acclaim for pioneering patient safety initiatives. how safe is it to continue passing sutures and instruments during transplant surgery after 12hours when you are on the verge of collapse? no legitimate reason necessary, no emergency, just an abusive manager who thought techs did not deserve a break and that no one needs to eat at night anyway. this is ok in maryland because, as in so many us states: “breaks are at the discretion of the employer.”

i documented the incident in a complaint to my supervisor, but eventually i was the one wrongfully terminated for daring to rock the boat. one does not criticize a manager ,and they are never disciplined, no matter how blatantly abusive they are to their staff. i was supposed to be compliant and just leave, but i didn’t so they wreaked my entire career.

we must close the loopholes that permit this and similar under-staffing abuses. as abhorrent as these stressful abandonment situations were for me; the forgotten victim is, as always, the patient. nurses need to use their strong evaluation skills to determine when their own abandonment in the workplace puts the patients in their care at unreasonable risk of harm. if there is risk, document that risk, as it is only by creating the paper trail that these cost-cutting administrators dread that we will ever force them to do what is safe for the patients. shame on the maryland board of nursing for not prioritizing basic patient safety above protecting your precious national icon!

the pen is mightier than the sword: keep documenting dangerous staffing inadequacies!

do not allow these for-profit hospitals to use your dedication to compromise safe patient care,

tsunami kim.

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When nurses just complain and do nothing ask them what are they going to do about it? If they answer nothing ask if they have head about passive aggressive.

One nurse alone has no power. Nurses standing together have power.

To the nurse who was terminated please keep on documenting, and telling your situation to others. Word of mouth is the best form of advertising.

To the nurse who was told to not say anything controversial to the doctors remind the other nurse there is the First Amendment.

Nurses are not aware of the power they have. When nurses work together it works! Nurses do have the solutions. There are hospitals where the nurses organized and came up with solutions. We do have solutions to present on Oprah or other programs. Nurses who do not believe this ,in my opinion buy into the fallacy that "Nurses are not professional" "Nurses are not as intelligent as doctors"

"If you don"t stand for something you will fall for anything"

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We have the solutions: safe staffing ratios

no mandatory over-time

no collusion among employers to set wages

increased funding for nursing education and

workforce development

Research done by both economists and clinical researchers proves that patients' outcomes improve when RN staffing improves. Read all about it at www.nursealliance.org.

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Wouldnt it be marvelous if they could strap one of those little hidden cameras on a few nurses, edit the video so as to not show faces of patients etc and just let the general public follow several nurses around over several days, oh heck, one would be enough. Hey for good measure we can make them 12 hour days.

First, my guess is that most of the video would be unusable because of the excessive speed and quick movments most of us manuever in any given day. The whole thing would be a big blur.

But hey that may be a start to show just exactly what the life of a nurse in a facility is like. No names, no faces, a generalized discription of the facility, and the cold hard truth.

Good idea. Until you've walked a mile in my shoes.....you know how that goes. People expect good care, yet they think nothing of abusing us in return. Then the managers seem to be blind when you are running around like a chicken with your head cut off because you are drowning. And don't forget to also record the call to the doc who verbally abuses us as well. I'm tired of the abuse.

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didn't dateline from nbc,and turning point didn't they did a nurses shortage before? i know turning point did the thing about abuse and neglect in some nursing home, plus they pull back a curtain that was cover with coach roaches.

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